Making Contact 2018

About the Workshop

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) has long asked: “Are we alone in the universe?” To try to answer this question, the Breakthrough Listen team at the University of California, Berkeley SETI Research Center (BSRC) brings together astronomers, engineers, and computer scientists. They perform the broadest and most sensitive SETI projects ever undertaken, using a suite of world-class radio and optical telescopes.

They now ask: “How should Breakthrough Listen and other SETI researchers prepare for potentially making contact with ET? How should we respond to a signal? What are we missing?”

A scholarly community of anthropologists, historians, science and technology scholars, futurists, linguists, legal scholars, policy experts, and others have considered these questions for decades. The Breakthrough Listen team at BSRC now seeks to engage with this tradition of interdisciplinary work in SETI.

To open this collaboration, the Breakthrough Listen team has invited scholars from across disciplines who have been thinking with issues relevant to interdisciplinary SETI. At Making Contact, a virtual, two-day event hosted online and at U.C. Berkeley on May 29 and May 31, 2018, invited working groups will discuss this ongoing interdisciplinary work in a conversation with the Breakthrough Listen Working Group. The Berkeley SETI Research Center is hopeful that disciplinary cross-fertilization will forge future collaborations between the Breakthrough Listen team, other SETI researchers, and broader research, creative, and intellectual communities.

This workshop is invite-only and recordings and workshop material will be available to invited Working Group members and Viewers.